


Dirty Harry

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Samhain to the Solstice 2019 [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst, Curses, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 14:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21447403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry was cursed to die at birth. His parents managed to hold back part of the spell, but it means that Harry is now cursed to be seen by everyone around him as a dirty servant. Only true love’s kiss can break the curse, but how can that ever happen when Harry disgusts everyone he meets?
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Series: From Samhain to the Solstice 2019 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1532687
Comments: 59
Kudos: 1564





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has elements from both “Beauty and the Beast” and “Cinderella,” but is not exactly like either. This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year. It will have two parts.

In a time when mountains could still walk, in the tiny city of Gryffindor which had once been part of the great Hogwarts Kingdom, there lived a man called Lord James Potter. He had married a woman named Lily Evans whose father had actually been a bandit, making their wedding one of the surprises of the century. But everyone who knew Lord Potter also knew that it was like him to fall in love with the bandit’s beautiful green-eyed daughter when he was overpowered and taken to her father’s campsite one evening.

Lord Potter was also silver-tongued. By the end of the evening, he had managed to talk the bandit into releasing him and into allowing his daughter to visit Gryffindor.

It didn’t take long after that until Lord Potter and Lady Lily were married, and their wedding day was full of laughter and rejoicing, especially since both Lady Lily and Lord Potter’s boon companion Lord Sirius Black were magical, and they turned all the goblets into black cavorting dogs at a certain point in the evening. Lord Potter was obligated to make them stop when his deep-drinking guests complained. But also, no one laughed louder than Lord Potter at the prank.

Someone must have been offended by the prank beyond apologizing, however. Or perhaps he was offended that someone non-magical had married a witch. That evening, a handwritten note blew on wings of magics through the bedroom window where Lady Lily stood gazing out over the trees of the thick forest, marveling at her good fortune.

The note said only, _Your firstborn will die at birth._

Lady Lily swallowed and crumpled the note in her fist. She nearly threw it away, thinking it the product of maliciousness, perhaps from one of the several young women who had been prone to sigh over her husband when Lord Potter was unmarried.

But she was magical. She knew the power and the wrath curses could cause. In the end, she retained the note and showed it to James the next morning.

Lord Potter read it over gravely. Then he looked up and said, “We will see what we can do.”

*

The curse manifested when Lady Lily was in labor. It was a crackling, green thing, exactly the color of the poison that had taken the life of Lord Potter’s father when he was young. But Lord Potter was waiting outside the room where Lady Lily was in labor with the iron shield she had told him would be needed.

Lord Potter lifted the shield with a tireless arm, as brave as the legendary Godric Gryffindor. “Be gone from this place!” he commanded.

The curse darted towards him and earthed part of itself against the shield. That proved it was based on fairy magic, which cannot stand the touch of cold iron—an excellent reason for never allowing your children to go around without cold iron on their persons if you can help it.

But that left part of the curse unaffected, so it was not _all _fairy magic. It tried to pass through the slightly open door of Lady Lily’s room.

There, Lady Lily reared herself up on her bed, her newborn son in her arms, and met it with an upraised hand and a surge of motherly love. The curse, a force of sheer hatred, shrieked through the air in mindless attack, and met the shield of love Lady Lily had raised.

Around the bed she had laid a circle of rowan leaves and salt, protection from evil and purification. Lady Lily had woven the spell with her own harsh breaths as she worked through the contractions, and the last addition to the circle had been the blood of her afterbirth.

From the depths of the earth, from the depths of her love, from the depths of her disgust for the wizard who had sent the curse, Lady Lily cried, “_Avaunt_!”

The curse flared like a falling star and went out. But a tendril of green still snaked through the circle and the blood and all the protections, and wrapped greedily around the body of Lady Lily’s son.

Lady Lily bowed her head in resignation. She had accepted that her son would be touched, tainted in some way. But as long as it was not death, she thought, they could live with the consequences and perhaps overcome them someday.

As she watched, all the dirt in the room seemed to fly to her son and adhere to his body. His brilliant green eyes grew dull, his hair was tangled and messy, and his face seemed more squashed than those of other babies.

At the same moment, a great voice spoke through the air, perhaps once a human voice, but distorted by the darkness of the curse. “_He will turn all others away, and the curse will be broken only by true love’s kiss._”

Lady Lily bowed her head as that great condemnation faded, and wept for the fate of her son.

*

Harry Potter grew up as a kind of servant, despised by everyone in the castle except his parents.

He knew his mother and father loved him. Because his father had held the shield when he was born and his mother had woven the protection that saved him, they loved him with all their hearts. His mother would comb out his hair and sing to him, and his father would brook no insult to his son, shouting when the taunting words were brought to him.

But all that happened, of course, was that the taunts were spoken out of Lord Potter’s hearing, and Harry’s siblings—Rosemary and Charles and Arabella and Kevin—shoved him down in the dirt and refused to play with him, and the people in the castle forgot he was their lord’s son and put him to labor in the garden and the stable.

The summer came when Harry was sixteen and he told his parents to stop intervening for him. It only made matters worse for him, as did the fact that those stolen moments made his siblings more jealous.

Lady Lily reached out and laid a hand on Harry’s cheek, studying him where he stood in front of her great mirror. “Are you sure this is what you want, Harry?”

“I’m sure.” Harry swallowed and looked into the mirror. To himself, his own face always looked shining and clean, but he knew that wasn’t what others saw. Their lips curled when they looked at him. “I—have to find the answer to this on my own.”

“But you’re our _son_.” Lord Potter frowned at Harry from the doorway of his mother’s bedroom.

“I know,” Harry said, and he smiled with the love at his father that few people ever saw. To them, even his sister Rosemary, closest in age to him, it looked like a twisted sneer. “But I can’t just be that. I can’t ever be a ruler like you are, or a witch like you, Mum.”

“You’re magical.” Lady Lily spoke the words like a prayer, and ran her hands over Harry’s forehead. The sign of the curse was there, a long, lightning-like scar that seemed to extend much further when other people saw Harry.

“I can’t show it,” Harry said quietly. Every wand that had tried to bond with him had exploded. “But when I work with plants…there’s something there. I think that’s where I’m going to find the answer, if it’s anywhere.”

“A tincture of rosewater isn’t going to defeat a curse like this, son,” said the low rumble of Lord Potter’s voice.

Harry smiled at him. “Then I’m going to find more powerful plants.”

*

Harry worked in the gardens.

There was a procession of visitors to Gryffindor in those days, because Harry’s sisters were coming of age to be betrothed, and there were people who were interested in taking his brothers, both magical, as apprentices. Harry ignored them when they sneered at him, those people on their prancing horses or flying carpets or blue camels. (The blue camels were the result of wizards and witches practicing with spells that frankly seemed useless to most people).

He instead worked with the plants.

They twined around his hands and snagged his ankles with sharp little tendrils and sighed when he left them, unless that was the wind. For plants have a singing and powerful magic of their own, and they remember those who treat them kindly. Harry learned how to predict when the roses would open, and when the birch leaves would return to the trees, and which plants would live through the winter, and when the first frost would come, and even how to give the plants a portion of his own magic that would let them live through such dangers.

But he found no cure for the curse. Indeed, he earned more sneers—from everyone except Lord Neville Longbottom, the betrothed of his sister Rosemary, although even Neville was cautious around him—because now he was covered with dirt in truth, and his hands were callused, and he slept in potting sheds more often than he did in the castle.

Lord Neville understood plants and the gifts of them, and sometimes he would work companionably with Harry in the garden, side-by-side. Those were the most peaceful moments Harry knew.

But now he was nineteen, and there was no cure in sight. Harry had begun to wonder if he should disappear and live in the woods, a recluse, where at least he would not be sneered at, and where the trees could care for him.

*

The man came walking up the path, not riding. Harry ignored him, however, as he bent down and grubbed in the dirt around one particularly stubborn weed that seemed to have magical roots. It could be someone coming to petition Lord Potter for justice.

The man stopped in front of him. Harry looked up without stopping his work. He found that he preferred the way his face frightened people lately. The forest sounded better and better every day.

However, the man stared at him instead of turning away. He wasn’t as ugly as Harry was, Harry thought, although his skin held the color of lichen and his nose looked as if it had started short and then been tugged out from his face. His eyes resembled a raven’s, cold and watching for the main chance.

“Who are you?” the man demanded.

“The gardener, sir.” Harry wondered if the man had come for some rare plants. Lord Neville had spread the words around that Harry was good with plants and could even make them grow in the way that only magical gardeners could, and so Gryffindor made some money selling herbs and the simples Harry could make. Not much money, and those people despised him as much as the others did, but at least it was a small way to help his parents.

It was one thing that had kept Harry from running into the forest, although he hadn’t acknowledged that to himself yet. They would have to hire another gardener, and the plants might not want to work with the one they found.

The man tilted his head, like a raven waiting for a wolf to rip open a carcass. “You have eyes like a woman I once knew.”

“Lady Lily, sir?”

“Yes. The lady of the castle. Yes.” The man’s hands clenched and wriggled against one another for a second like a bucket of worms. “Is she here?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, sir. If you go straight up the path and to the door, you can tell them who you are.” He didn’t know if his father’s guards would want to let this ragged man in, but his mother was kind to everyone, and if the man had known her, then perhaps he was a bandit who had risen to nobility. There were some like that.

The man glanced down at the weed Harry was pulling, and let his lip curl. Harry was relieved. That was more usual to deal with than the man’s kind of intense scrutiny. Easier. “When dealing with magical plants, you must use magic.”

“I am, sir. But the parts of the weed that are buried under the earth are far enough away from me that they haven’t received the infection I gave the weed yet. It grew these enormous roots that must reach for a league. I’m pulling it up slowly as they die.”

“You are _magical_?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you are a servant!”

Harry shrugged, a bit amused. The man was probably magical himself, and despite how he looked, Harry was thinking that he was born nobility, now. “Not every magical talent can support someone on their own, sir. And look at how dirty I am. I was lucky to find a respectable house that would take me on.”

The man gave him a long, searing look, and then walked on up the path. Harry shook his head and turned back to his weed.

*

“What happened to the weed?”

“Fancy you asking about that, sir, after a month,” Harry said, a little amused. He nodded to the compost pile in the corners of the gardens, which was big enough that it looked like a baby dragon. “Part of the corpse is there.”

“Only part?” The man drifted towards Harry and then stopped and watched him like a raven again. Harry assumed that that was the way he watched most everything. If he had only known, this level of interest for someone who had proclaimed himself a mere gardener was unusual, but Harry _didn’t _know that.

“Yes. The rest of it came back to life and attacked me, and I had to burn it.”

“It should not have come back to life if you infected it with a proper disease.”

“My magic isn’t perfect, sir,” Harry said without offense. Lords and nobles could say all sorts of things to him. Unlike the rest of his siblings, he’d never been allowed to grow up with the notion that he was special. The curse made people sneer at him even when visitors to the castle knew that he was firstborn son of Lord Potter and Lady Lily. “That spell was the first one I invented, and it was meant to deal with smaller plants.”

The man was silent, but he didn’t go. Harry turned back to his irises, considering them. It was probably time to cut them back. He’d fed them magic to encourage them to grow, and now they were spreading like the forces of Slytherin marching on Hogwarts centuries ago.

“I wish to find some plants,” the man said suddenly. “Rare ones. Moonborn lilies. Have you heard of them?”

Harry turned around and stared at him, thoughtful. At least the man didn’t have _one _trait that was common to nobles: he didn’t resent Harry staring at him. He regarded him back until Harry nodded. “My sister’s betrothed talked about them. He said they only grow where magical blood has been spilled.”

“Yes, but I find murder distasteful. I only want to find some already growing and harvest them.”

Harry didn’t laugh. Something about the dark tone of the man’s voice made him sure that the lord _would _resort to murder if he thought he had to. “Well, all right, sir. As it happens, I know a place in the forest where some _might _grow. But I’ve never been there on the night of the full moon because of the werewolves around here.”

The man shivered almost imperceptibly, but nodded. “Would someone with a wand be enough protection?”

“Sure. Do you want to send a guard with me, and—”

“I was speaking of myself.”

Harry raised his eyebrows and stared at the man hard. Outside of his parents, he’d never heard of anyone rich and powerful who would brave danger at the side of a dirty gardener like him.

“Not all of us disdain hard work,” the man said, with a sneer that oddly seemed directed at the people he was talking about instead of at Harry.

After thinking about it for a moment more, Harry nodded. “Then yes, we can go this evening, sir. Do you want me to meet you outside the gates?”

“Why there?”

Harry didn’t take offense. This man was the sort who would suspect that people were trying to murder him, probably. “So that no one will have to see you meeting with me and your dignity won’t be offended, sir.”

The man looked hard at him for a while. Harry just returned the gaze. Really, other than cutting back the irises and then tending to the chores of watering and weeding that always went on, he had little to do this afternoon. And working with flowers had taught him (as it teaches everyone who does it properly) patience.

“My name is Lord Prince,” the man finally said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Only that you’re a noble,” Harry said. He had heard something about the Prince family, but he had never thought about memorizing it. He didn’t have the proper lessons because of his curse, anyway, what with all his tutors breaking off at some point to complain about the nauseating smell coming from him, or chastise him for being so stupid.

Lord Prince nodded. “Then I shall come into the forest with you.”

It seemed an odd means of making the decision to Harry, but then, he had accepted, from the behavior of his parents’ visitors and his siblings’ betrothed, that nobles behaved oddly. He nodded back and turned to get the implements he would need.

By the time he glanced over his shoulder again, Lord Prince had vanished.

*

“How did you become so conversant with the forest?”

“My mother used to live here,” Harry said. He thought that was safe enough. After all, lots of low-class people lived in the forest at that time (and some perhaps still do, which is why well-educated children should stay out of them).

But it got him a sharp stare from Lord Prince, for some reason. “And she still lives here?” he asked. They were walking through a deep clearing where Harry’s magic was easing the way so that the leaves didn’t crackle under their feet with every step. “She taught you the kind of magic you wield?”

“No,” Harry said. He halted under a tree to peer ahead. The light of the full moon was falling into another clearing that looked empty at the moment, but Harry had once found wolf tracks here. He didn’t see anything right now, though. “I mostly taught that to myself. She was born here, though.”

“I see. What is your name?”

It occurred to Harry that it was odd the noble hadn’t asked him that before now, but he dismissed the notion a second later as they carefully wended their way around the clearing. It was probably weirder that he would ask the name of a dirty old gardener now. “Harry.”

“And your last name?”

“I have no last name.” That was true for the most part (although Lord Prince might have found it less true if he had been able to think about it). “I’m not noble, my lord.” He paused when a dark shape moved off to the side.

“That was a werewolf.” Lord Prince’s voice was low, and his hand gripped and pulled out a crystal. Harry felt his eyebrows rise. There were few magical people around Gryffindor who used crystals. Some found better focuses for their magic, such as wands, and others simply didn’t use the kind of power that would work with one.

“Yes.” Harry straightened up and flexed his fingers. He waited for a moment as the dark shape slid past, and then nodded. “I think it’s one of the werewolves who’s able to retain his human mind, my lord.”

“And why do you say that, Harry Gardener?”

Harry accepted the name with a slight roll of his shoulders. It wasn’t as though it was really that different from the one his curse had denied him. “Most werewolves would simply attack like the ravening beasts they are. This one is holding back, as if it doesn’t really know what we are.”

“You may be right.” Lord Prince’s voice was low with displeasure, and he was turning in a ring, his crystal aimed everywhere but the right places. Harry frowned. The lord must be less used to the forest than he thought, or he would have been aiming in the right direction more often.

“I think so, sir.” Harry spun and lifted his hand as the dark shape abruptly leaped at them past a huge oak tree.

The werewolf was soaring, slavering, for a second, and then the oak swept around and grabbed at the soaring creature with its branches. Harry closed his hand into a fist, and the oak clenched its boughs tight, with a creaking sound. The werewolf shrieked and flailed, golden eyes flaring. Harry kept his hand clenched tight, and breathed a little more easily. He hadn’t known for sure that that magic would work before he tried it.

(That is a practice much adhered to by magical researchers, and which should not be).

“Come on, my lord,” he whispered. “We should be able to go a little further. Werewolves don’t share territories, so no others will come to see what this one is squealing about.”

Lord Prince’s face was motionless as he tucked the crystal back into what looked like a pouch in his sleeve and followed Harry. “How did you perform that magic? Did you cast a spell on the tree?”

“No, sir. I really can’t use spells. But I’ve talked to the tree, and I’ve established a communion between us.” Harry was proud of himself for remembering that word. It was one that he had heard his mother refer to only a few times.

“A _communion_?” Abruptly, Lord Prince was beside him, and spinning him around with a hand on his shoulder. Harry just barely managed to keep his hand in a fist, but the werewolf would have sprung out and started following them if he didn’t. Harry was a young man who could keep his mind on his work. “Do you know how rare that is? Are you a nobleman’s bastard?”

“No,” Harry said, with perfect truth. He was _sort _of a nobleman’s son, but trying to say so would just make things strange. He held up his clenched fist. “Is there something else you can do so that I don’t have to keep my hand like this?”

“What does that do?”

“It tells the tree to hold the werewolf. I let it go, and so does it, my lord.”

Lord Prince raised his eyebrows, which seemed to be somewhat of a pastime for him (and was more common among noble circles than Harry knew about), but nodded and took out something from a pocket. It looked like it was a piece of nail. Harry sighed to see that it gleamed silver in the moonlight, and Lord Prince glanced at him with a slight curl of his lip. “Feeling sorry for the beast?”

“No, sir. Just grateful that someone other than me can handle it.”

Lord Prince’s face smoothed out, and he nodded. Then he lifted the nail. “Be ready to let the werewolf go.”

Harry nodded, and opened his fist. There was a long, crashing fall, and then a startled howl that rapidly rose several octaves as the werewolf raced towards them. Harry took a step back, although he was careful not to shelter behind Lord Prince. He knew how some nobles _hated _someone getting that close to him, at least someone who was dirty and not dressed in proper clothes.

Lord Prince glanced at him, face and eyes opaque now, and then tossed the silver nail into the air. It gleamed and spun for a moment. Then it sped in the direction of the werewolf.

“It won’t kill him?”

“No. Although how you can discern it is a _him_ under all that hair is more than I can know.”

Harry shrugged. “They’re humans like us when they’re not transformed,” he said quietly. “The curse that he’s under isn’t really his fault, unless he’s one of those rare idiots who seeks out wolfsbane and drinks it and bathes in the light of the full moon.”

Lord Prince took a step back as if he was distancing himself after all. Harry was glad that he hadn’t pressed too close. But he got one of those strange questions, mingled with the scream of the werewolf being struck by the silver. “How do you know that? You must be a nobleman’s brat, after all, to have the education.”

“Just because my mother was magical, sir. This way.”

Lord Prince followed him looking curious, but he didn’t say anything, which made it easier for Harry, in turn, to ignore his presence.

*

“Here, my lord. Moonborn lilies.”

Harry moved gratefully out of the way as Lord Prince took several long, eager steps into the clearing. He would keep a watch out while the man harvested them. This wasn’t the sort of work Harry was good at. He neither brewed potions nor wanted to pick living plants unless they were weeds.

“I would not have found these if not for you.”

Harry, peering into the forest and keeping his ears open as far as he could for the sound of other werewolf howls, said, “Yes, my lord.”

“I am talking about a _reward, _you absurd idiot.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t really see what you could give me, sir. I don’t have much to spend money on. All my food and clothes are given to me by my employer. And I can’t think of what potion using moonborn lilies I would actually drink.”

There was silence for a time, except for Lord Prince chopping and harvesting the thick roots of the lilies, and then he said, “You mean that.”

Harry had gone far into listening for other sounds among the rustle of leaves, and it took him long seconds to wrench his mind back to the conversation. “Yes, my lord.”

“Why?”

“I’m not a noble, sir.” Harry smiled a little at the darkness. He knew what posh frustration sounded like, from hearing the various ways that the Potter children complained about the young lords and ladies brought to marry him. “I don’t have the manners or the magic that you do, of course. Or the money. But I don’t have some of the problems, either.”

“Problems?”

“Problems like the kind that can only be solved by drinking a potion made of moonborn lilies to make you invincible.”

This time, the silence lasted until Lord Prince came out of the clearing with his hands and a bag of leather over his shoulder stuffed with lilies. He glared at Harry and began to walk back the way they had come. Harry walked next to him, asking trees to stop werewolves twice before they made it back to the Potter estate.

Harry nodded to Lord Prince and turned towards the small shed where he slept. A spell spat past him and widened the doors, as well as added a thicker, softer mattress on the floor. Harry glanced over his shoulder, but Lord Prince had already disappeared.

“Thank you, my lord,” Harry called out, just in case. As far as he was concerned, a few nights spent on a softer pallet were reward enough. He expected the pallet to revert to its original form then, because magical transformations were so often temporary.


	2. Chapter 2

The pallet didn’t revert, but Harry honestly wouldn’t have thought about it if Lord Prince hadn’t shown back up in his garden a few days later. He had the same disgruntled look on his face that he’d carried out of the forest. Harry studied him with curiosity from a compost pile that he was raking. “Did you not manage to gather enough lilies for your potion, my lord?”

“I want to know why you did what you did.”

“Because you asked me to.” Harry wondered for a moment if brewing potions led to memory loss. It wasn’t as though he’d ever stood over one and inhaled the fumes to know.

That got him an impatient scowl from Lord Prince’s direction. “People want rewards.”

Harry shrugged. He thought about the reason he’d come to the garden in the first place, in the hopes of finding a powerful plant that could end his curse. But as the years had passed away, that had become less important. He was content here, and since he was acting in the place of a lowly servant that people _expected _to be dirty anyway, the sneers were less frequent.

“Tell me what you _want_.”

Harry concealed a smile as he thought about it. It was possible that Lord Prince was a good enough brewer that he could grant part of Harry’s request, and if not, then the challenge should keep him occupied and keep him from bothering Harry. “You might have noticed how ugly I am, sir. Could you brew a potion that would give me a more handsome face to look at in the mirror?”

Lord Prince took a long step closer. “You’re mocking me?”

“Why would I be, my lord?”

“Because you must have noticed _my _looks are hardly the best. If I could brew a potion to make someone more handsome, why would I not have made it long ago?”

Harry blinked. “You’re hardly ugly, sir. And I thought that maybe you could and you just had better things to do.”

Silence. Lord Prince stared at him with those raised eyebrows again. Harry wanted to turn away and go back to his compost, but he had the feeling that it would ruin something delicate and slow if he did. So he held still.

“It would not affect the way you look in other people’s eyes,” Lord Prince said finally, his voice low and thoughtful. The challenge seemed to have caught his attention, which was all right with Harry as long as it sent him away to his cauldron. “But to cast an illusion of yourself in the mirror? That I could do.”

Harry nodded. Why not? It sounded like an interesting project, and if he could help out with his knowledge of plants, then he would feel like he had made some contribution. The garden was his home and he was always happy to be there, but he did enjoy the thought of expanding a little beyond it.

*

“Are you under a curse?”

Harry blinked and looked up from the water barrel, where the floating image of his face was a twisted monster’s, with tusks and warts on every feature. “What? Yes, my lord.”

“And you could not have _mentioned _this?” Lord Prince was glaring at him in displeasure.

“It’s the sort of thing that I forget about, sir,” Harry said, with a slight shrug. He stood up and brushed some of the dirt off his sleeves. “I’ve been under it since I was born. It made everyone but my parents despise me, and think of me as dirty.”

Lord Prince stiffened the way he did over odd things. Harry just dealt with it by thinking that he was a noble and they were odd like that, the same way you may have dealt with a dragon by thinking it was on its way to eat someone in the next country.

“I have been influenced by a _curse_?” Lord Prince sounded displeased.

“I don’t know, sir? You’ve treated me decently. You let me go with you to find the moonborn lilies, and you’re trying to help me with my reflection.”

“I offered that because I was disgusted—” Lord Prince cut himself off. “How is this curse to be broken?”

“The usual way, sir.”

“True love’s kiss?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But the curse turns everyone away from you and prevents anyone from falling in love with you,” Lord Prince murmured. “Ingenious.”

Harry looked hard at him for a moment. He didn’t like the idea that Lord Prince would praise the curse that had destroyed his life. But Lord Prince only stared back at him, and Harry held back a sigh. The man really wouldn’t see anything wrong with doing that, and would probably be disgusted if Harry asked him to stop.

Nobles were _different._

“How do you intend to break it if everyone is too revolted by you to come close to you?” Lord Prince asked.

Harry shrugged. “I was thinking that I probably wouldn’t break it. The life I have now is superior to the one I used to have, where people sneered at me and even some of my relatives snickered behind their hands. My parents gave me my life and then released me into the world to pursue happiness. I have that.”

“You do not.”

Harry just looked back at him. He wasn’t going to disagree, since Lord Prince could be trouble if he wanted to, and someone knowing about the curse wasn’t enough to prevent them from being influenced by it. His siblings had known all their lives what had happened when he was born, and they thought he was ugly and dirty anyway.

“You began to work on a cure, and you left it unfinished. How could you be happy?”

Harry bit his lips to keep from smiling. It seemed that Lord Prince was different from some other nobles in possessing a work ethic, at least. He inclined his head. “If my lord wishes to aid me, then perhaps I would have a chance.”

“I cannot believe that you would set out to break the curse and give up. Yes, I wish to help you.”

“I am grateful, my lord.”

Lord Prince looked sharply at Harry to see if he was making fun of him, which he always did, but then nodded. “We shall begin tomorrow.”

*

And what storyteller can retell those exact days, golden and green with the most brilliant summer weather it had ever been Harry’s fortune to experience, with two heads bent together over the water barrel and the potions cauldron and the bed of flowers were Harry’s roses grew wildest and richest for him?

Potions was less smelly than Harry had thought it would be, although he still sneezed several times. Lord Prince always had him sneeze away from the cauldron, simply frowning at the first results that appeared, as if he always expected something else. Then he would nod and scribble down a long notation on a scroll of parchment that never made any sense to Harry.

“You are patient,” he remarked one day, when Harry was scattering rose petals in a silver basin that Lord Prince had brought from his castle, wherever it was.

Harry looked up, shoving his tangled hair behind his ear. “What do you mean, my lord?”

“Many of the—people I know would have expected instant results once they knew I had decided to help them.”

Harry shrugged. “You have to have patience with plants, sir. That’s probably part of the reason I was always drawn to them. The curse taught me to be patient.” He finished scattering the rose petals and then spread his fingers. Water jetted from their tips and into the basin, making the rose petals rise.

“There are not many who could do that, either.”

“I couldn’t handle a wand, my lord. I made them explode.”

Lord Prince leaned over and stared right into his face. Harry held still, wishing he could roll his eyes, but deciding it was probably better not to do that with a noble watching him. This was Lord Prince’s way. He liked to study things that interested him closely, whether that was a beetle on a rose petal or Harry’s face.

“Who are you?” Lord Prince breathed.

“Harry, my lord. The way you said.”

“I had assumed….” But Lord Prince didn’t say what he had assumed, which might be something wrong for all Harry knew. He eased back and frankly stared at Harry for a moment, then shook his head as though awakening from a trance and faced the basin again. “We will be working on the aural components of the curse today.”

Which was shorthand for “I don’t know what about you is making me uncomfortable, but we aren’t going to talk about it.”

Harry hid an amused smile as he stepped up to the silver basin. This was Lord Prince’s way, too. And after getting used to silence in the garden for so long, he found that he couldn’t really mind.

*

“My lord? What are you—”

“I wanted to cast a spell without waking you. It seems that I failed.”

Lord Prince spoke from behind a stony mask. Harry studied him warily, but he didn’t know what he had done to inspire that look. Lord Prince turned away after a moment, to study instead the smoking ring of potion that he had apparently spread around Harry in his sleep and lit on fire.

Harry recognized the smell of lavender, but nothing else. He waited until Lord Prince turned to face him again. “My lord?” he repeated. This time, he wouldn’t let what had happened retreat into silence. This was, frankly, more than a little strange, that Lord Prince had thought burning something around him in his sleep would work, and had sneaked into the gardens when he knew Harry wouldn’t be awake.

“This is a potion that can expose lies.” Lord Prince was frowning mightily at the grass. “Your curse is a kind of lie. It should have affected it. Dissipated part of it. Deceptions being burned off are revealed as greasy smoke puffing from the body.” He glanced sidelong at Harry. “But no smoke came up that wasn’t from the burning potion itself.”

Harry sighed and sat up. “My lord, did you expect it to reveal that _I _was lying?”

Lord Prince twitched, one massive movement that seemed to run up his spine and then back down again. He said nothing, but this time, the silence was of a different kind from the sort that Harry had experienced.

Harry nodded. “I’m under a curse, my lord. I can’t use regular magic because I make wands explode. I didn’t grow up in the forest. I am good with plants. That’s all true. I’m struggling to think of what else I might have said or done that you could have thought was a lie.”

Lord Prince turned and stalked away into the night.

Harry lay down again and banished the smoking remnants of the potion by moving his hand along the ground in a wide circle. The night air that came in after that was much pleasanter, and he fell asleep with his head almost hanging out the front door of the gardener’s shed.

*

“The curse cannot be what you said it was,” Lord Prince announced one evening a few months later, as Harry was carefully gathering plants and turning over flowerbeds for the frost.

“In what way, my lord?” Harry’s words were distracted. He was trying to convince a few flowers to go to sleep, and they didn’t want to. As far as they were concerned, there was still sunlight during the day, and why would that mean the seasons were changing? It hadn’t got cold enough at night yet to shock them.

“It should drive everyone away and make you repulsive.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry sighed as a rosebush finally folded inwards and he could feed it magical strength that it would use for surviving the cold instead of growing. He glanced up to find Lord Prince watching him with a pinched expression.

“It does not drive _me _away.”

Harry thought about it, then shrugged. “You wanted my aid in finding the moonborn lilies and then in figuring out the curse. I doubt it was meant to prevent purely straightforward interactions. People can also interact with me to get what they need from the gardens. But they still don’t like me, and they snicker behind my back.”

“Who does that?”

“The other servants, my lord,” Harry said slowly, not understanding the way that Lord Prince was glaring at him _now._ “Lord and Lady Potter’s children. Most of the visitors to the estate, although not Lord Longbottom. He has a good heart. And you are exempted, I think for the reasons that I already talked about.”

Lord Prince swung around and stalked off again.

Harry sighed and went back to talking to the plants. Maybe the curse didn’t work in the traditional way on Lord Prince, he thought sourly, but it did _something_, or he wouldn’t act like such a strange man all the time.

On the other hand, maybe that was just more proof that Harry shouldn’t be trying to get involved with the nobility, curse or no curse.

*

It was the depth of midwinter when Harry saw Lord Prince again. He had almost forgotten about the man, and he was wrapped in thick blankets, watching the dance of coronas around the stars, when Lord Prince abruptly appeared in front of him and tossed him a blanket that Harry caught in surprise. It appeared to be woven of some thick wool, or wool-like material, and it was warm in a way that made Harry gasp as his fingers dove into it. He only remembered other blankets like that with Warming Charms from his distant childhood.

“Thank you, sir!” Harry grinned up at him and then reached down and back to the pot that he’d put aside in case he saw Lord Prince again. He’d given up on it when the man didn’t come to the Potter estate for months, but he was glad to be able to hand it over. “This has the seeds of moonborn lilies for you.”

“Moonborn lilies do not have seeds.” Lord Prince was standing very still, staring at Harry with those wide dark eyes. “They only grow where magical blood has been spilled. How did you manage to pot them?”

“I went back to the clearing where you harvested them several times,” Harry said happily. He dragged the blanket around him and snuggled into it with a sigh. This was much warmer than the others he’d had. “When it wasn’t full moon. It’s hard to find them when they aren’t open, but I managed, and I found out that they do shed small seeds. I had to use my magic to see them, because they’re so small. But I found them, and I decided that I would save them for you.” He yawned. “Thank you for thinking of me.”

Lord Prince said nothing more, and Harry didn’t know when he departed, because he almost immediately went to sleep under the warm blanket. But he did think that there was a touch on his hair, fleeting and unsure.

*

“You mean to say that he _withdrew _it?”

Harry snorted a little when he heard the voices of the young Ladies from the direction of the rose garden. His sisters, technically, Arabella and Rosemary, but he never really thought of them that way. He turned to pick up the watering can. He would come back later and coax the roots to accept water, since this was a rare week when neither rain nor snow had come.

Arabella’s teary voice answered before Harry could move much further away. “I don’t understand it! I thought Lord Prince was in love with me!”

Harry froze, feeling sharp tingles race over his body like the exploring legs of fleas. He swallowed. He had thought that Lord Prince only visited the Potter estate to try to figure out the curse and find plants.

Of course it wasn’t the case. Of course Lord Prince had been here for other reasons. Of course. Harry closed his eyes and memorized the metal handle of the watering can where it pressed into his palm. He had to remember his place. He had to remember that he was just a servant to everyone, even if some people were nicer about it.

“But you weren’t in love with him,” Rosemary said, sounding confused.

“Of course not! Who could be? He’s so _ugly_!” Arabella sniffled, and made a sound like plucking a twig. Harry hoped not. “But he’s powerful, and it was wonderful having him interested in courting me. It made Heir Malfoy jealous. And why did he withdraw? He won’t even give a reason.”

Harry turned away, shaking his head, as their conversation went on to other things. He would probably never understand the women who should have been his sisters, or the men who should have been his brothers, because of things like this. Why would someone _want _a person courting them who they thought was ugly?

Not that Harry was ever going to know what it was like to have someone courting _him_.

And it made his own half-realized idea that Lord Prince had come to the Potter estate to see _him_ all the more ridiculous. Harry should have remembered that he was only a gardener, as Lord Prince had named him.

Well, he would live up to that name.

Harry went to water the plants, and to tamp down dirt over his heart.

*

“Harry.”

Harry woke up slowly, and stared at the man kneeling down in front of his pallet. It took him long minutes to recognize Lord Prince. He had been so sure that he would never see him again once he had known that the man was courting Arabella and would have no reason to return when he’d withdrawn.

Still, there was no reason not to be polite. It wasn’t Lord Prince’s fault that Harry had believed something stupid. He straightened and nodded. “Hello, my lord. Did you have a question about the moonborn lily seeds?”

“I want the answer to a question.”

Harry half-relaxed. Lord Prince was as demanding as ever. He hadn’t changed. Maybe they could still work on potions and combating the curse together. “Yes, my lord. Which one?”

“Are you the son of James and Lily Potter?”

Harry tensed up again. Then he raised his head. He wasn’t going to deny it. Maybe Lord Prince had suspected it already and this was one reason he had reconsidered his suit for Arabella’s hand. He didn’t want to be connected to someone who had a gardener for a brother. “Yes.”

“And yet you never said anything. And you live in the garden and tend the plants…”

“I once thought that I might discover some kind of natural magic that would combat the curse,” Harry admitted. It was odd to say the words when he hadn’t even thought about them for years. “And I wanted to live on my own and have some freedom. Being despised by my siblings and tutors got to be too much.”

“But your parents?”

“They were the only ones unaffected by the curse. They didn’t want me to do this, but I told them I had to, and they were wise enough to let me.”

“Or careless enough. I never would have believed it of Lily—”

Lord Prince cut himself off, but Harry had heard the words. He stared at the man. “You knew her? Did you live in the forest with her?” But that couldn’t be, he thought. Lord Prince had acted as though he barely understood the forest.

Lord Prince leaned back, ripples of shadow coursing across his face, and inclined his head sharply. “When we were children. I left and traveled the world and learned the kind of magic that focuses more on crystals and potions. I returned when I heard that she was married. I thought—it does not matter what I thought. Selfish thoughts.”

“You thought you could win her away from the man she married.”

Lord Prince snapped his head around, and stared again. Then he said, “You are not withdrawing.”

“It was obvious when you mentioned that you’d been children together and then you came back when you heard she was married.”

Lord Prince said, “That is less significant than the fact that you can continue to look me in the face and speak to me as if I mattered. But you do not know what I did next.”

“You decided to court my sister Arabella.”

Lord Prince considered him carefully. “I know that you have the magic of plants and that you cannot use a wand,” he murmured. “But are you also a Seer?”

“Only in the divination of overheard conversations.” Harry considered Lord Prince in the low light from his banked fire and the stars. “Why did you decide to withdraw your suit? Were you wise enough to realize that my sister didn’t love you?”

“That, and I realized that there would be no revenge in impressing the daughter of the woman I once desired to marry.” Lord Prince was silent and still for a moment. “In fact, I had lost the desire for revenge.”

“Oh?” Harry could feel the tremble of his own heartbeat. He ignored it.

“Yes. What revenge would be found by impressing a foolish young woman, or one who loved someone else?” Lord Prince turned to face him. “What would be better than returning to the one person I have found who did not think I was ugly, who put up with my gestures and my silences and my stubbornness, who gave me a gift not because he received one but because he wished to?”

Harry’s mouth was as dry as unwatered earth when Lord Prince reached out and slid his fingers gently through his hair. It must have felt clumped and greasy against his fingertips, but he didn’t flinch. Of course he wouldn’t, Harry thought. His own hair must feel the same way to him.

“I would be foolish indeed to turn my back on that,” Lord Prince said, and his voice throbbed and echoed in a whisper that beat louder than Harry’s heart.

When he leaned forwards and pressed his lips against Harry’s, Harry didn’t understand at first. And then the lips moved impatiently against his and Lord Prince uttered a serpentine hiss, and Harry did. He grabbed some of that greasy hair that had never seemed ugly to him, and licked Lord Prince’s lips experimentally.

The world trembled like a crystal goblet wobbling on the edge of a table.

Harry gasped, and not only because of the heat surging through him. There was magic, tapping on his temples and hissing in his ears and muttering words that he couldn’t understand. He thought he saw a flash of green light, and remembered the stories Lord and Lady Potter had told him, about the green light that had accompanied the curse at his birth.

“You are beautiful.”

Harry blinked and drew back, staring at Lord Prince. The man was hunched like a vulture, staring at him, fingers working with expressive tightness on his knees. Harry guessed at once what was bothering him, and shook his head firmly.

“If the curse has changed my appearance, it hasn’t changed my vision,” he said. “You’re still the man who was patient enough to keep company with a mere gardener and not let himself be put off by my appearance. You’re the one who was clever enough to see through the curse.”

“I am a selfish and petty man. Perhaps not the one you waited for.”

“I’d given up on waiting,” Harry told him simply, not having seen until now how true that was. “I would have dwindled away here among my plants if not for you. I thought I was content, but contentment and oblivion were way too close. You’re enough for me, Lord Prince.”

And Lord Prince sighed out, and said, “My first name is Severus.”

“Severus.” Harry remembered enough of his tutors’ lessons to guess at the meaning. He smiled as he let his hand rise and trail down the sharp cheeks, the sharp nose, and the curves beneath the sharp eyes. “It suits you.”

Severus kissed him again.

*

The wedding was small, and held in Gryffindor, in the gardens. The only attendants were Lord and Lady Potter, and Lord Longbottom. The other Potter siblings had stayed away, out of embarrassment (as Harry suspected, and as was true), and it wasn’t like they knew a lot of other people.

Under an arbor of Harry’s beloved roses, Harry Potter and Severus Prince joined their hands and pledged joined magic, joined lives, and joined hearts. Lady Potter smiled with a mist in her eyes. Lord Potter’s eyes shone with relief. Perhaps he hated Lord Prince, perhaps there would always be that enmity between him and the man who had wanted to marry his wife and had courted his daughter out of spite, but it was hidden under the soul-deep relaxation that was the end of the curse.

Lord Longbottom applauded, and Lord Prince rode away with his gardener on a black horse.

They had not told the others, but they had a quest to undergo before they settled into bliss on the Prince estate. Lady Potter had not been able to provide a guess at the enemy who would have hated her enough to want to curse her firstborn, and Lord Potter knew of no hereditary enemies, either. They would seek out the source of the curse, be it sorcerer or fairy, warlock or demon, and lay the enmity to rest.

But that is another story as long as the tendrils of roses, and here we lay our tale to rest.

**The End. **


End file.
